WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have
preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken.
The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at
http://lists.xen.org/

Tom Woller and I from AMD have been working with Ian, Keir and IBM on
scoping out a plan that will provide a common interface to the user for
both the Intel VT/VMX and the AMD Pacifica/SVM platforms.
A key concept of the proposal is the creation of a HW Virtualization
Layer (called HVAL), which we describe below. We are still working out
some of the arcane details offline and are discussing it with Sunil from
Intel for a joint proposal.
While we are offline sorting out some details, we wanted to
share/review/discuss with the community our thinking behind HVAL.
Goals of HVAL:
- Abstract the areas of the code that deal with low level platform
level specifics of hardware based virtualization
- Providing a single domain builder interface creating a simple
abstraction layer within the hypervisor for both VMX and SVM
- Create an interface that is suitable for both architectures
- Minimize the number components that need to be modified... keep as
much of existing VMX code
The modifications will consist of:
(1) support infrastructure modifications (libxc/python/config files)
(2) creating generic HVAL code base from the VMX existing base
(3) creating a simple function table for the generic/common Hypervisor
HVAL functions
(4) modifying the current VMX (and future SVM) to use the new HVAL
interface
(5) modifying current non-VMX files that access VMX specific functions
(6) modify such that all VM logic is compiled by default (obsoletes
CONFIG_VMX)
Some other points worth mentioning is the HVAL will be limited to the
x86 tree and will apply to both 32 and 64 bit.
Attached is a file the describes the implementation of HVAL and a
breakdown of the files that will be touched. You'll see there are some
parts that are left as 'MORE TO COME SOON' as AMD and Intel work on
these sections together.
Tom Woller is building the patch for this.
Elsie Wahlig
AMD